


fox hymn

by maharlika



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Animal Traits, Autumn, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Nature Magic, Shapeshifting, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:53:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharlika/pseuds/maharlika
Summary: It started with the carrots.Thor woke up one autumn morning and found that his vegetable garden had been rooted through, leaving empty patches where he’d been trying to grow carrots that weren’t stunted to the size of his fingers.It could have been raccoons, maybe foxes.He should have fixed the fence—had already begun heading towards the toolshed—when a sharp breeze gusted through the dying leaves, carrying the scent of growing chill and turning weather. A few weeks ago, his neighbor Magnus had come home with three foxes strung together, their coats rusted with blood.A fox!Loki story written just in time for the autumn equinox.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 220
Collections: Best Thorkis





	fox hymn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raccoonsito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raccoonsito/gifts).



> written for the sweetest raccoon. happy birthday! may your spring come soon 🌱
> 
> see end notes for additional things that i didn't want to tag in case of spoilers!
> 
> ty to k and m and e for reading through 🌻 and to h and j for receiving my fic pasta 🍝
> 
> elsa made incredible art to accompany this fic! please check it out [here](https://twitter.com/spreadtheashes/status/1308313445561856000) 😍

It started with the carrots. 

Thor woke up one autumn morning and found that his vegetable garden had been rooted through, leaving empty patches where he’d been trying to grow carrots that weren’t stunted to the size of his fingers.

It could have been raccoons, maybe foxes. 

He should have fixed the fence—had already begun heading towards the toolshed—when a sharp breeze gusted through the dying leaves, carrying the scent of growing chill and turning weather. A few weeks ago, his neighbor Magnus had come home with three foxes strung together, their coats rusted with blood.

He went to check on the ladies: Lilah and Dolores and Agnes were lively when he approached, not even half-scared by whatever had snuck in to eat his crop, the floor of their coop already littered with feathers as their molt began. So instead Thor fed his chickens and went off to set his garden to rights, then plucked some apples from the bowl in the kitchen and left them on the soil. 

The next day, they were gone. 

He left grapes out, then, and found them untouched in the morning. Turnips were accepted, but spinach was blatantly rejected and covered under a mound of dirt. 

At the end of the week, Thor decided to bake a pie.

—

It was one of the more pleasant things about being human, Thor often thought. The food. He’d learned to make dough by watching the cook inside the house at the edge of their forest, her ruddy face in the light of the brick-fire oven. 

The other pleasant thing about being human was having opposable thumbs. Whether it was for undoing the snares and traps that people left in the woods or crimping the edges of his crust just _so_ —dexterity was always appreciated.

—

That evening after dinner, he took a still-warm, golden slice of apple pie out into the back garden and set it on the freshly-turned ground. There was no point in trying to plant carrots again, not before spring, but Thor held the notion that other things could grow out of this mess. 

Or maybe it was only wishful thinking.

 _Sentiment_ , Thor heard in his head, starting to feel silly as he stood there with a slice of pie cooling on the dirt. 

He turned his back to go back inside, thinking of sharing the rest of the pie with Jane and Darcy down the road, when there was a stirring in the bushes. 

_Not a raccoon, then,_ Thor thought, as the scent of a fox slunk into the garden. He didn’t turn his back, only kept walking towards the door. As soon as it swung shut behind him, Thor leaned against it and breathed deeply. 

Earthy roots, withered leaves, apple and cinnamon, the slightest remnants of heat and fire. The soft padding of paws on rich soil. The snuffle of a snout, then the flash of teeth, and soon the fox was gone. 

—

It was an age-old question: why did trees shed their leaves? Thor hadn’t understood it before, had lived through the seasons without care for logic or reason. And besides, spring was his purview, not autumn.

He’d come across the answer in the whisper of the mosses, the oldest of plants, who scoffed at the lofty ways of trees. To grow so tall, trees had one conceit: their large, broad leaves. But the leaves were their undoing as well, filled with tiny holes for breathing where the cold would seep through in the winter. To last through the chill, trees had to let go of their leaves, hold their breaths, and wait for spring.

That was what autumn was—one last, large inhale before everything slept for the winter. Gorging animals, trees turning their coats. Even in humans, the instinct prevailed, one that urged people to gather close around a fire and keep warm.

—

The spring equinox lived in Thor’s bones, embedded so deeply there was no way to resist its tug. Autumn though—well, Thor had spent these last few years letting it pass him by as well as he was able. Force of habit, trying to look away from things he couldn’t have. Greed had never worked out well for him.

The solstices were easier; Thor could track the sunlight across the horizon day by day, like the floor slowly tilting sideways underneath him, but the autumn equinox always snuck up on him.

Thor was determined to stay in and keep out of trouble, no romps through the forest for him, not with Mabon so close. He even herded the ladies into the house, settled them down with rushes on the floor and a scattering of buckwheat, and cozied himself in the armchair by the fire while they clucked away.

It should have been a quiet night. 

But Thor, sentimental fool that he was, kept an ear tilted towards the door. He didn’t know what he expected to hear—perhaps a visit from his fleet-footed companion, scarfing down the beets Thor had set out as an experiment—but it was not the shrill _ow-wow-wow-wow_ of a fox in pain. 

He was out of the chair and through the door before he realized what had happened, recalling Magnus and his quarry, and went back in for his shotgun. He slung it across his back and tilted his face into the air, breathing deep—and there it was: a thin ribbon of blood, drifting on a cold wind. 

—

Thor knew the woods well enough that he could wander through them with his eyes closed. He side-stepped the overgrown root of a striped maple and crept carefully past a warren of rabbits, following the scent of blood deeper into the forest. 

When Thor found his fox, it was on its side, shuddering weakly, though it made no sound. It seemed hardly larger than a kit, small enough to be carried off by the great horned owls that nested in these woods for the winter. 

“Clever thing,” Thor murmured, holding his hands up as he wandered closer, “not making another sound.” He deliberately put his boot down on a twig, snapping it under his weight and alerting the fox to his presence. Its eyes shone in the moonlight, two pools of silver.

“I’m here to help,” Thor said, “if you’ll let me.”

The fox held his gaze for another moment, but then lowered its head, panting, and Thor was now close enough to see its hind leg caught in the teeth of a vicious trap. He winced. The paw could be broken, mangled beyond use. Even if it wasn’t, infection could kill it even quicker than a predator.

Thor knelt on the cold soil, glad at least that Magnus was as unimaginative as Thor had always assumed he was. The trap was a standard one, easily disarmed when Thor pushed down on the two springs on either side of its jaws. The fox yipped softly as its leg was freed, but could only shuffle weakly away as Thor let the trap snap shut.

Their eyes met again, Thor’s and the fox’s, and without another word, Thor scooped the animal up and held it against his breast.

“Well,” Thor said, careful not to jostle the fox’s injured foot, “I do still have some of that pie.”

—

Thor arrived back home in a flurry, stomping into the house with adrenaline still pumping through his veins, the fox a warm but unmoving weight in his arms. The hens didn’t rouse themselves to move, feathers unruffled as they sat their plump bodies in the living room and watched curiously as Thor set the fox down by the fire.

He patched up the wound as best as he could. The fox made no noise of complaint, not after Thor had put a slice of pie in front of it as a distraction while he cleaned and bandaged its leg as neatly as he was able. It was licking its paw daintily when Thor sat back, satisfied with his work. 

“You can sleep here tonight,” Thor said, and felt immediately ridiculous for it. 

The fox only blinked up at him, its warm body rising and falling with its breaths. 

_It’s a fox_ , he reminded himself. _It doesn’t actually understand you._ Its silver gaze had turned amber now, dull in the glowing firelight. Just another animal, no matter how intelligent it seemed.

After a moment, it tucked its tail against its body, curled into itself, and seemed to go to sleep. 

With a sigh, Thor stood up and bolted the front door, then began to shed his clothes to get ready for bed. He tried to rouse his girls one more time, but they only clucked and pecked at his fingers in annoyance, unperturbed by the fox in their midst.

“If you hurt my chickens, I’m going to leave you outside for Magnus to find,” Thor said, leaving his bedroom door half-open. Just in case.

He must have imagined the amused huff from the corner, because the fox didn’t stir, not even a twitching of the tail or an ear as it slept on, dreaming of whatever foxes dreamt of. 

—

When Thor woke up the next morning, he found Loki sitting in the kitchen, dressed in nothing but Thor’s red flannel, legs kicked up onto the table. He was also eating the rest of Thor’s pie with his hands. 

That was what Thor chose to focus on, and not the long expanse of Loki’s thighs, the sinuous curve of his calves. Not his toes, pale as pearls under a light dusting of soil. Not the smirk on his face that Thor could only describe with human words as _shit-eating_. 

“Hello, brother,” Loki said, voice rough. Like he wasn’t used to talking with a man’s throat. 

Thor had only been staring, dumbfounded, but at the sound of Loki’s voice, something ignited in him, rushing hot and strong. 

A deep and profound annoyance.

“You little shit,” Thor growled.

“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“The last time we saw each other,” Thor said through gritted teeth, “you left me to pay for your debts in Ratatosk’s service.”

“It was just a bit of fun,” Loki said, smiling beatifically.

“A decade of running up and down the Yggdrasil for that bastard,” Thor groused, but his attention shifted when he realized something else.

“Were you even _hurt_?” 

“You must be getting very rusty if you can’t even see through my illusions, brother.”

“It’s not my season,” Thor grumbled, his anger leaving him the longer he looked at Loki and wondered what it meant that he was here.

This only made Loki smile wider, and Thor imagined the jaws of a trap snapping around his own neck. 

“True,” Loki said. “And it _is_ mine.”

“Why are you here, Loki?” Thor sighed. He rubbed a hand across his face. 

“I missed you,” Loki said, as if it were that simple. 

It wasn’t, of course. It never was, with Loki.

“On the equinox?” Thor pressed. “As a _fox_?”

“You seemed to like it,” Loki said. He was finished with Thor’s pie now, and was licking his fingers with satisfaction. “You’ve done very well with the cooking, by the way. Bravo. You almost seem properly human.”

Thor resisted the urge to bare his teeth as Loki continued, nonchalant, flicking crumbs out of Thor’s shirt.

“But you’re not, are you? And honestly, I don’t understand why you keep up with this charade.”

Thor snorted. “We’re _shapeshifters_ , Loki, everything we do is a charade.”

“Not like _this_ ,” Loki said, nostrils flaring, his smug countenance faltering. “We don’t play at being _human_ for years at a time—what are you _doing_?”

Thor lowered his chin and stopped scenting the air. “You smell weird. I’m going to make some coffee.”

“ _Coffee_ ,” Loki sneered, as if the very word was rancid to him.

“It’s very good,” Thor said, avoiding looking at Loki while he busied himself with the stove and the coffee grounds. Loki did smell strange. Sweet and warm, like cloves and cinnamon on the tongue. “Almost as good as having thumbs.”

"You're absurd," Loki snorted. 

“How did you find me?” Thor asked.

“Sif,” Loki admitted. “She has a better nose than I do. You know I don’t... _dally_ with four-legged forms.”

“Why a fox, then?” Thor asked. He turned around, and was surprised to see that Loki had stood up, silent as he’d moved into Thor’s space. They were now very close, close enough that Thor could touch. Close enough that it made him greedy again.

“Like I said,” Loki murmured, “I missed you.” His green eyes were the color of fresh leaves. Thor had always loved that shade—it had been the one thing of Loki he felt that he could claim. A tiny seed of spring in his autumnal brother.

“I’m not a fox,” Thor breathed, barely daring to move.

“No,” Loki said, “you’re not.”

Loki took another step, then stopped. He put his hands on Thor’s chest, and Thor looked down at his dirty fingernails, at the billow of his sleeves around Loki’s thin wrists. Anything to distract himself from the way Loki carefully looked up and tilted his head, baring his neck to Thor.

This much closer, Loki’s scent was so strong it was more sensation than anything else: like a golden sunset, or the crunch of a perfectly ripe fruit. Like a perfect autumn day, crisp and cool, flushed with just enough warmth. It made Thor’s mouth water. He couldn’t help himself—it was only a nudge, his nose against Loki’s skin, but it made Thor feel feral, reminded him of the fangs he kept tucked away, of the rising howl in his chest.

“Why do you smell so sweet,” Thor growled, close to panting like the dog he was. Like the wolf that he tried to pretend he wasn’t.

“It’s my _season_ , you fool,” Loki said, voice steady though his fingers had curled _tight_ around Thor’s shirt. “Do you never listen to what I say?”

Thor had gotten very good at not listening to Loki these past years. He tried to listen now.

“Why now?” Thor asked, still muffled against Loki’s skin. “After all these years—”

“You’ve spent too long as a human,” Loki said, pulling away to scowl at Thor. Thor barely kept in a snarl. _Back_ , he thought, _come back. Come here._

“You make things so _complicated_. You’ve forgotten how to _want_ , brother. How to _take_.”

“Is that what you came here for?” Thor asked. 

“I came here for _you_ ,” Loki said.

When Loki kissed him, it was a savage thing, more teeth than lips, more bite than caress. Thor had to take Loki’s face in his hands and remind him how to kiss like a human, slow and deep until Loki caught on.

The sound he made when Thor touched his bare skin was closer to the crow of a raven than the cry of a fox. 

Thor ran his fingers down Loki’s spine under the flannel, familiarizing himself with this body. It had been a while. The hills that Loki’s bones made under his skin were stark. It was almost disconcerting—humans had such thin flesh.

There were advantages to this form, though, as Thor was well aware when he reached down and wrapped a hand around Loki’s cock, hard and leaking between his legs.

Loki gasped, his head dropping to Thor’s shoulder. He went up on his toes to chase Thor’s touch, panting wordlessly.

“Opposable thumbs,” Thor said, and swiped the pad of said thumb across the slick head of Loki’s cock.

“Point taken,” Loki groaned. 

The bed was too far away. Thor groped behind him to shut the stove off, coffee forgotten, and then he hauled his brother onto the kitchen counter. 

That was when Thor noticed the tail. It peeked out from behind Loki, bushy and russet brown all over except for the very tip, which was white, like a brush dipped in paint. 

Thor had to suppress the urge to grab it and give it a good squeeze.

“You do know that humans don’t have tails,” he said, just to watch Loki’s expression darken.

“You know I don’t do well with mammals,” Loki scowled. 

“And yet you’ve come to me in this shape,” Thor said, eyebrow raised.

Loki shrugged. “Like you said, it does have its, ah, advantages.” His leg was curling around Thor’s waist, pulling him close. Thor obliged and kissed Loki again, then shoved the flannel off his shoulders and replaced the cloth with his mouth, feeling suddenly ravenous. 

“Ah,” Loki gasped as Thor bit down. “ _Harder_ , gods, bite _harder_ , make me bleed—”

“I’d rather consume you in other ways,” Thor murmured, pulling away with a lick to Loki’s teeth-bruised shoulder. 

“That was a horrible line,” Loki sighed, even as he parted his legs, bracing his feet on the countertop. 

Thor let loose a growl, unable to help himself, and grinned, wolf-like, when Loki shivered in response. 

“Animal,” Loki said, eyelashes fluttering. “ _Beast_.”

Thor wasted no more words, leaning down almost in half and swallowing down Loki’s cock in one go. His smell was stronger here, less spice and more earth, rich and dark.

Loki’s ankles dug into his shoulders, his upper back, his hands scratching at Thor’s hair. Thor could hear Loki’s tail too, swishing restlessly.

“ _Brother_ ,” Loki cried out, when Thor released his cock with a _pop_ , directing his tongue lower, to Loki’s sweet furl, dripping with the honey of his season. Of his _heat_ , Thor thought, and tried to banish the thought that Loki was only here for that. 

Thor only surfaced when Loki’s fingers turned vicious, clawing him upwards to kiss him, but Thor released his mouth after a moment and slid his fingers past Loki’s lips instead. His brother’s eyes were hooded as he laved at Thor’s digits, soft tongue and blunt teeth, taking on an almost worshipful cast. 

Thor was struck with an urge again, and this time he did not resist, winding Loki’s tail around his hand and tugging, watching as this seemed to unravel him completely. His toes flexed, his back curled, and he gave a low, animal keen when Thor gently pulled his fingers away and slid them inside him, a rumbling noise punched out of him at the unbearable heat of Loki’s body. 

“This isn’t, _ah_ , entirely, _nngh_ , necessary,” Loki panted, rocking down onto Thor’s fingers.

“It’s been a while,” Thor said, focused on the slick movement of his fingers in and out of his brother, rubbing his thumb around Loki’s rim as it clenched tight around his knuckles. 

“I can take it,” Loki hissed, then threw his head back with a whimper at a particularly hard thrust. 

“I’m sure,” Thor said dryly, but pulled his fingers out all the same. He was getting impatient, and the morning was moving along, and he had hens to feed and chores to do. 

Loki licked his lips when Thor pulled out his cock, but said nothing else until Thor was inside him, fully seated after a slow, inexorable push. 

“Ohh,” Loki sighed, tilting his head back with a small, sly smile. Thor leaned in and scraped his teeth against that long, pale neck, making Loki clench around him. “Maybe humans _are_ on to something.”

Thor only grunted, taking hold of Loki’s thighs and fucking into him, hard and smooth. 

Loki groaned, falling backwards on his elbows with a laugh. “Yesss, oh, brother, just like that.”

The sound his cock made in Loki’s hole was slick and obscene, and just hearing it made Thor harder. Hungrier. Soon he was fucking Loki with abandon, snarling under his breath at the way Loki’s body gave in to his thrusts. 

_Greedy_ , Thor thought. The wisp of guilt that came with it quickly dissolved into pleasure. 

This particular story always ended the same way. 

Thor growled, a proper guttural one, biting roughly at Loki’s neck, his ear, and Loki seized up with a cry and came, going boneless as Thor finished inside him, snuffling at his chest and shoulders, scenting deeply. Apples, wheat, fresh rain. 

Once more it rose in him, the howl that Thor kept locked up tight in his chest, but before he could let it loose, Loki tugged him down for a wet, open-mouthed kiss, and Thor whined into it instead. His cock pulsed, still inside Loki, and when he finally pulled out, he did so with a filthy noise. Drops of spend splattered to the floor. Thor growled again and hauled Loki’s legs into the air, licking at his come inside his brother’s twitching hole. 

“Rabid beast,” Loki purred, sounding entirely too satisfied with himself. 

—

Afterwards, Loki cleaned them up with a flick of his hand, a tidy little spell that Thor had never mastered. While Thor fixed his clothes, Loki looked at him askance, and where his brother was, there stood a raven casually preening its feathers. 

Thor opened his mouth to speak, but could find nothing to say, and the raven cocked its head, hopped over to the window, and flew away.

“Fuck,” Thor sighed. 

He pulled his pants up, and went to feed the girls.

—

That night, Thor dreamt that Loki came back and stayed. He saw him prowling into Thor’s home, eyes blown wide and muzzle reddened with something sticky and sweet.

He sat astride Thor’s lap and rode him as moonlight streamed in through the open window.

 _Stay_ , Thor said in his dream, the words he couldn’t find before. _Stay_.

—

Thor was still feeling sorry for himself the next morning. 

_This is why you don’t get greedy. It never ends well._

He shuffled to the kitchen, then looked up and paused, bewildered. No...it couldn’t—

Lilah, Dolores and Agnes were clamoring at the feet of a figure that was bent over an awful-looking pie crust. 

He was familiar with Loki’s tail by now, but when Loki straightened up, Thor saw that he had ears now as well, tipped with black and twitching in annoyance as the hens clucked incessantly. 

“Wow,” Thor said, “you really _are_ bad at that form.”

Loki turned around, mouth already open around a retort, when Thor strode forward, grabbed him by the arms and kissed him.

“Stay,” Thor said, spreading his fingers against the small of Loki’s back. Wishing he could encompass him, and knowing that he couldn’t. Nothing could. But spring and autumn weren’t so different, and some plants grew roots deeper than anyone could fathom. They had always been two sides of the same coin, he and his brother, and though winter might keep them apart, it could not last forever.

“I’ll consider it,” Loki said airily, though his eyes were brighter than Thor had ever seen them. 

“I’ll bake you a pie,” Thor said. “All the pies, any pie you want.”

“You really are a fool,” Loki laughed. When he kissed Thor again it was with the bite of autumn. It slipped under Thor’s skin, rattled through his ribs to coil around his heart. 

“I’ll keep you warm through the winter,” Thor offered.

Loki’s eyelids fluttered. “Now there’s something promising.”

—

When spring came, Thor knelt in the garden and pushed carrot seeds into the soil. In the pocket of his overalls, Loki slept, curled up as a grass snake, pretending to hibernate. Thor knew better—Loki had certainly seemed awake when he’d sat astride Thor’s cock earlier that morning. 

At the edge of the forest that bordered his property, Thor could smell two fox kits and one wolf cub, newly-born, smelling like damp wood. 

More and more, Loki had gotten him convinced that they could run together. Now that winter was over, it seemed less like a choice than an inevitability. It always made Thor feel wild, spring. 

He would have to put his affairs in order, maybe find someone to look after the ladies. 

But then, then there was spring, and Loki. 

It would be a good season.

**Author's Note:**

> i debated whether to put a sibling incest tag on here but decided against it. if someone asks for it, i'll put it in though.
> 
> kudos and comments are appreciated, as always 🌻


End file.
